Danny Morgan and Walter Salles Talk About Kristen

Director Walter Salles got the cast together early. “So by the time we started filming we really had been hanging out together and it felt like a parallel between us making a film and the life they were leading in the book,” Morgan said.

“We were just on this adventure together. We had lots of fun – although I don’t think we were as decadent as they were.”

And Morgan admits it took a little while to get to know Stewart and Mortensen. “They weren’t being distant, I was a bit starstruck. But we went out quite a bit to bars and Kristen would come along. She might have security but most of the time people were cool.”
It was only when they were travelling between locations that also included Mexico, Argentina and the United States that the hysteria surrounding the Twilight star became apparent.

“At airports, there would be thousands of people screaming ‘Kristen’ and going mental. It must be tough. I don’t envy it. I was very impressed by how well she handles it at such a young age.”

Walter Salles:

“The composer Gustavo Santaolalla had seen one of the first cuts of Sean Penn’s Into the Wild and was so impressed that he told me, ‘Don’t look anymore for Marylou – just meet this girl’,” the director recalls. “Kristen was indeed everything we were looking for. She knew the book extremely well and she understood Marylou's essence – an independent spirit, a young woman who was way ahead of her time.”